Deep Into Darkness Peering
by Sashet
Summary: After the events of Journey's End, The Doctor recalls his life since the Time War and wonders if he has the right to change history.


_A/N:_

_My thanks to Helen Parkinson - from whose 1989 non Who story I 'borrowed' the title and to Dr D. for the quick beta._

I always said I wouldn't touch the Time War... but....well I just had to have a little dabble.. I hope you like it.

************

**Deep into Darkness Peering**:

_In war there are no unwounded soldiers – Jose Narosky_

My name is The Doctor and this is the story of the Time War, the last great Time War, the one that was supposed to end the darkness in the Universe forever.

This is the story of how I thought I could change the course of my history to save me from becoming something I didn't want to be and how, in the end, I learnt that some things are much better left alone.

The Time War was horrendous, the bloodshed and the deaths were on a scale that this Universe had never seen before and I hope will never see again. Planets burned, races screamed, lives blinked out of existence in less time than it takes to tell and at the end of it all, all that was left was me.

The only survivor of the Time War.

The last of the Time Lords.

Or so I thought.

It really doesn't matter how it started, just that two races, diametrically opposed to each other, became so entrenched in their positions of principal that war was the only solution. They both thought that only they could be right and in the end there was nobody left to realise that they were both wrong.

My people, the Time Lords, should have known better, we were old and wise and had been the accepted benevolent, non-interventionist guardians of the Universe since the Dark Times. Years of peace had made us prosperous and indolent to the point where when it became obvious that war was the only option, we were so under prepared that it was unbelievable.

The Daleks were always spoiling for a fight, it was in their nature. They were a race built from a need to survive that, over the centuries, became a need to dominate with an intolerance of anything that wasn't like them or didn't conform to their demands that was beyond simple fanaticism.

As is usually the way with war it escalated from a petty dispute to all-out hatred in what seems now to have been nothing more than the blink of an eye. It wasn't, it was years, years when talking and compromising and hope tried and ultimately failed to find a solution. Years when the Time Lords should have realised that they were never going to find a peaceful solution and make plans. Years when the Daleks KNEW they weren't going to find a peaceful solution and DID make plans.

I'm not sure now that I can even remember what they fought over…it was SO long ago even for a race that measures its lifespan in thousands of years.

There aren't any records left. There aren't any stories left to be told – except mine and who really knows if what I tell is the truth or just my version of it.

The Time War is a legacy that may well die with me – I am its last survivor, its last custodian.

The war raged long and hard. The war raged far and wide across the Universe. It harnessed the power of suns and supernovas and black holes. It turned time in on itself and warped reality until nobody knew what was real and what wasn't any more.

The Daleks built vast armies.

Dalek Caan and the cult of Skaro were at the heart of their plans; they knew that in the resurrection of their creator lay their survival and so Davros was reborn. He planned well but ultimately in vain because until recently I was sure that I had seen him die in the jaws of the Nightmare Child when the war was but young. I had tried to save him but that, like so many other things I tried to do, so many people I tried to save, was nothing more than a valiant but futile gesture.

The Time Lords resurrected a renegade.

The Master may be many things but he was NEVER a match for the might of a Dalek army at the height of its power. He watched as the Cruciform fell, as everything that made us what we are was subsumed by a power more frightening than the Time Lords could ever have imagined. As the most sacred symbols of the Time Lords were overrun and destroyed he ran, leaving us to our fate.

Once he had been my friend and although the years had changed us both and turned us into enemies I had never considered him a coward. His inactions forced me to actions that I will take with me to the grave, actions that ended a war that would have swallowed up not just this universe but all those that surrounded it.

He forced me to turn from my life and become something I didn't want to be. He forced me to become The Oncoming Storm.

I was the only one who could stop it now. I tried…I really tried…. But nobody wanted to listen….they just wanted it to end and seemed uncaring of the cost. I tried everything I could to save them both. I thought I had failed. Many, many years later I would learn that wasn't true…and once or twice for a few brief hours I wasn't the last survivor of the Time War.

It had become kill or be killed and I hated that, I fought against it. For all my hundreds of years I had advocated a non-violent way of life and because of that I let others die. I tried to find a peaceful solution, a way out that would let us all live but it just wasn't to be. The Time Lords had no stomach for war but they also had no appetite for a peace with the Daleks and in the end there was no solution except to let them all die, my friends and my family, the highest born of Gallifrey, those born from war and desperation on Skaro.

And there isn't one of their deaths that I don't feel burning inside me every time I allow myself to think about the things I did.

Even though I did it to save millions of lives it doesn't change anything, it doesn't change what I am or what I did. No amount of reason and logic will ever cleanse the blood of millions from my soul and that is something that slowly….very slowly…and with the help of others, who can't even BEGIN to comprehend what I did, I am beginning to come to terms with. I can see now that if it hadn't been for those I have met since that fateful war, then I would have allowed the Time War to take its final victim.

The war had already taken so many lives when I was called back to Gallifrey. It broke my hearts to see the destruction already done to my home planet. I know that over the centuries I have had a …difficult …relationship with Gallifrey. I couldn't wait to escape its stuffy overbearing confines, especially once my only real friend had fled in disgrace, but yet I kept coming back. Sometimes of my own volition…sometimes when I was summoned back…but I always kept a place for it inside me. It is my home and because of me and what I did it is now no more than a series of fragmented memories, a fading name in a changing universe.

Those who had exiled me from my home now made me become the one person who held their destiny in his hands. It was NOT a burden I wanted…I never asked for this….and it was not a burden I could carry. Gallifrey was burning, the Time Lords were a broken race and all the things they had stood for, everything they had believed in, had been torn apart and rendered useless by the might of an army that knew nothing but destruction and violence and death.

I, more than many amongst the Time Lords, had run from violence, and now violence was my only option. I doubt that the irony of that fact was lost on the last of the Presidents of Gallifrey as he lay dying, his plea to me to end the war his final words.

Once the war had started in earnest it didn't take long at all to become an almost unstoppable trail of death and devastation…on both sides. By the time I got to Gallifrey there was little of the planet as I remembered it left to save. The Cruciform was gone. Overrun by a mass of Daleks who saw it as just another obstacle to victory. To the Time Lords it was so much more and its loss was, perhaps, the moment at which they decided that all was lost and gave up what little fight they had left.

Soon after that the Daleks poured through the Gates of Elysium unstoppable in their single minded determination to 'exterminate'. The destruction they left in their wake was on a scale that even now I have trouble comprehending. If I allow myself to think about what I saw it is as if I was back there… I can hear every scream, see every broken, bleeding body, feel the heat of the fires that burned seemingly everywhere, taste the death of my people on my tongue….and I know that although many years have passed since Elysium it was the worst moment of the Time War and I doubt I will ever really, truly come to terms with what I saw and what I failed to stop.

It wasn't a one-sided bloodbath, the Daleks suffered too, they lost their leader, their creator and a million others but they just kept coming. No emotions to hold them back from their mission…a trait that served them well. As one Dalek fell another filled its place built from the blood and bodies of their fallen comrades they just kept on coming, following the plan that Davros and the cult of Skaro had devised even long after its mandate was no longer achievable.

As the might of the Dalek army took the rift in space and time that runs through the Medusa Cascade and pulled it apart, I wanted to turn and run. I wanted to run and to never stop running but if I did that it wouldn't just have been the Daleks and the Time Lords who had ceased to be on that day - it would have been the whole of reality itself. I didn't see how I could stop them…one man...one lonely man in a universe filled with bloodshed, hatred and misunderstanding.

But I had to try, even if what I did went against everything I had - up until then - held to be true, even if I died. When I looked at what was at stake….so many planets, so, so many races who didn't even know what was going on light years away from them in a tiny corner of their Universe…how could I turn away?

I'm The Doctor, the man who makes things better.

I'm the Oncoming Storm.

I AM the destroyer of worlds.

And so I did what I had to do. I went to the Medusa Cascade and using the last of the power of the Time Lords and even of Gallifrey herself I sealed the rift. I sealed legions of the Dalek army behind an impenetrable barrier from which there will be NO escape, EVER.

It destroyed the Daleks but it also destroyed Gallifrey, shattered the planet into nothing more than atoms. Had there been any of my people still alive at that moment then they would not have survived the implosion of their world. I'm still not sure how, when the dust settled and the silence returned to the Universe, that I was still alive. I should have died along with them all….right then I wanted to…more than anything. I didn't want to be the only one left who knew what happened.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and when the rift was sealed I was damaged, physically and mentally to the point of regeneration. My body was broken, scarred by the firepower of the Daleks, burnt and bleeding from the essence of Gallifrey as she shattered around me. But worse, so much worse than the physical was the emptiness I could feel in my mind, the emptiness where once the quintessence of the Time Lords had been. Regenerating would repair my body but not my mind….not the knowledge that I couldn't feel them anymore…not the fact that I am and always will be the last of the Time Lords.

I had done what they had asked of me. I had saved the Universe but at what cost? I had become as bad as those I had tried to stop…a murderer…on the MOST extreme level. I had turned my back on everything I had believed in and I had changed the history of the Universe forever.

Why me?

I've asked that question so many times in the years since the Time War and I still don't have an answer….and I never will. There is nobody left to ask, not anymore. There would be no going back to this place and time…there couldn't be. It was a fixed point in time and would never change…the consequences of that happening were ….unthinkable.

With my strength fading fast and my regeneration almost upon me I used my TARDIS to loop the fading energy from the death of my planet to seal the Time War. It was like locking a valuable item in a safe and then throwing away the key. It was over and would stay that way forever. The Time Lords and the Daleks were… in this timeline and this universe… gone forever. That would NEVER change.

I had seen Davros and the President of Gallifrey die before my eyes. I had been told that The Master had run from the war but as I couldn't feel him in my mind I knew he was dead. I was alone, for the first time in my long life I was truly alone.

It wouldn't be until many years later that I would learn how wrong I was about so many things.

************

I'm still The Doctor; although I don't look like I did back then I'm still the same man…inside. I couldn't stop my first regeneration.

The Time War was over, I was dying and so my TARDIS took me far away and allowed me to heal. Physically I was fine again…new body, new face, big ears… but mentally I was still broken. The silence where the souls, the hearts of my people had been was deafening, I hadn't really noticed it until it wasn't there anymore. Now the silence just served as an unnecessary reminder of what I had done and drove me to the point where I started to seek out ways to die so that I could be with them again.

I was full of blood and anger and revenge…not traits that I am proud of…but this body was born in battle and sought ways to die in battle. Ways to make my people proud of me, ways to avenge what had been done to them. What I found was unexpected and initially unwanted because what I found, in my favourite place in the Universe, was the power of the human race to love and not expect anything in return.

I found Rose and she saved me.

She took me from the brink of self-destruction and showed me that the Universe is still full of hope if you just know where to look. She showed me that there was still a place for goodness and compassion in a soul that I thought was tarnished with hatred and despair.

She loved me…without question or criticism and I loved her back, because she deserved no less.

When, somehow, on the Earth of her near future we found a Dalek, she saw my fear and held my hand. She took my fear and my hatred for the last of the creatures that had destroyed so much and turned it into compassion. That compassion ultimately killed the Dalek but it had a choice and that was something that I would never have given it.

Far, far into her future we returned to an Earth that was devastated by the damage I had unwittingly unleashed on it to find that yet again, the Dalek race had found a way to survive. They had grown in numbers and in strength until they were, once more, a vast army of hatred powering their way through an unsuspecting Universe, conquering or destroying all in their path.

I had to stop them. Not for me, not for Gallifrey but for Rose and the people of Earth. For the humans who died for me on that day on the Game Station, people who hardly knew me. I had to stop them.

In the end all I could do was die.

I thought I would die sending the Delta Wave to stop them but ironically it was time that was my enemy. I didn't have enough of the one thing that I have always had. It ran out on me leaving me to the fate of dying at the hands of my oldest enemies until Rose returned to save me. She had looked into the heart of my TARDIS and harnessed its power. She turned that power on the Daleks and this time, with no compassion, she shattered them into atoms.

Saving the Earth would have cost her her life if I hadn't taken the power from her. The power at the heart of a TARDIS is the power of time and space, the power of the universe from its beginning to its end. Nobody, not even a Time Lord, can hope to survive that and yet, knowing that, I took the power from Rose. I died to save Rose because she would have died to save me.

My second regeneration was my choice.

I would still be The Doctor and she would still be Rose and we would still be together. She had saved me – I loved her - there was NO choice.

I like this new regeneration he is less …serious… than the one before and he has great hair! I'm still passionate about the same things and although I laugh more I also cry more.

I lost Rose… trapped in a parallel world after, once again, she had sacrificed herself for me and for the Earth. At first I thought I would break, revert to the man I had been when she found me, but that would have been disrespectful to her memory. She had shown me so much in our short time together that I lived on in a way that I hoped she would approve of.

I met Martha, she was smart and brave. I asked her to do the impossible and she didn't fail me. I took her to the end of the Universe and there I found something that shook me, scared me and elated me all at the same time. There I found that I wasn't the last of the Time Lords, another had survived the ravages of the Time War. The one Time Lord who had been a constant in my life, a friend at first, an enemy at the end but always a constant, was here at the end of the Universe, hidden as a human until I awoke his consciousness and unleashed him on the Earth.

I will admit that even though we were no longer friends….we hadn't been that for many years even before the Time War… it was comforting to be able to feel him in my mind. To know that he was around, to know that, even in some small way, Gallifrey wasn't totally gone helped to ease my guilt, just a little.

But the Earth wasn't enough for him, he wanted the Universe. He wanted to start a new Time Lord Empire moulded in his image. It would have been NOTHING like the Time Lord Empire of old and I couldn't let him drag the name and the values of the Time Lords into that.

I had to stop him and the only way I could do that was to let him die. I didn't kill him but nor did I try to save him. He let himself die rather than be trapped with me for eternity. I know now that my ideals of turning my back on the Universe and caring for The Master would never have worked. We have known each other for nearly 900 years, he would have found a way to trick me and escape, and maybe I would have even let him. The Universe without him is a less bearable place than it is with him.

As I stood at his funeral pyre thankful for the smoke that stung my eyes and gave me an acceptable reason for my tears, I knew that finally I WAS the last of the Time Lords. When I die my race will die with me and eventually we will pass into the myths and legends of the Universe until we too are forgotten.

Like many before her Martha moved on and so did I…..as far as Donna Noble. Donna who was brash and funny and for a short while she was the MOST important person in the whole wide universe. My life without her is painful not least because of what I had to do to that brash, funny, opinionated temp from Chiswick.

What would she say if she knew what I was contemplating?

The walls of all the Universes were starting to collapse and for once I didn't have an answer, I didn't know what to do. But Donna wouldn't let me give up and eventually all those who meant the most to me, from many, many years of my life were once again with me, giving me hope and strength.

Even Rose was back….and although that was a bad thing it was also something that I hadn't even dared to dream about since I had left her in a parallel world. No one was more pleased for me than Donna, except maybe me!

The Daleks were back, destroying reality in their wake, turning vast tracts of time and space into nothing more than lifeless voids. Hundreds of ships in orbit above the Earth, death and destruction on an ever increasing scale - it could be nobody but the Daleks. Those who stood beside me knew we couldn't let them win and each of them, in their own way, did what they could, what they had to, to help me.

They fought and they threatened, some of them even died. I didn't ask them to but they did none the less and I will be forever grateful to them for that. This was my fight…the Daleks were my problem and yet they shared my burden and in the end we survived ...well most of us did.

Davros had survived the Time War - saved from his death, a death that I was sure that I had witnessed, by Dalek Caan. He then set about rebuilding the Daleks from his own flesh and blood. They were literally his children. They were a well organised force with enough power to destroy everything and with Davros as their leader it would take something unique to stop them.

I thought I could never escape from what I did and what I was but now…now I have learnt that maybe I didn't do enough. I've learnt that the time lock has been breached, the time lines have been changed and because of that the Universe is once again in danger. I had been shocked when I saw Davros and learnt how he had been saved. Why was Dalek Caan able to use something as primitive as an emergency temporal shift to break through my time lock? What had I overlooked? What had I failed to consider in my hurry to end the Time War?

Caan had found something...maybe just the smallest flaw in the time barrier…a tiny rift in another time and space that he could use to force his way to the heart of the Medusa Cascade and rescue his beloved leader, his creator. With so many realities all separated by less than a millionth of a second and all co-existing along side each other anything was possible. I hadn't had the time or the strength left to be certain that what I did covered EVERY conceivable strand of time and space and, because of that, the Earth was once more in peril, and this Universe was once more falling to the tyranny of the Daleks. But somewhere at the back of my mind the seed of an idea had been planted….if Caan had broken the time lock then why couldn't I?

Why couldn't I go back to heart of the Time War and find another way to end it? A way that didn't mean I lost everything? It would change everything but I had done that once already, didn't that give me the right to do so again?

Caan's plan was devious and deadly, fitting for a member of the Cult of Skaro...they had been Davros' chosen few tasked with coming up with the plans that would eventually ensure that the Universe belonged to the Daleks now and forever. But his brilliant mind had been shattered by what he saw inside the Time War, shattered by the realisation of what the Daleks were and what, unstopped, they would go on to become.

He tricked Davros into believing he would finally get what he had always wanted…the total destruction of reality itself. Then he manipulated time and space to ensure that I would be there because he knew that, yet again, I was the only one who could stop Davros.

I had already done this – more than once. I couldn't do it again…but there was one who could.

The biological metacrisis had not only created the DoctorDonna but also a part human, part Time Lord version of me….grown from my own hand and born in the heat of my battle with Davros. He was the same as I had been after the Time War, full of a hatred he had only experienced in his memory. He fulfilled Dalek Caan's prophecy….he killed the Daleks…he turned their own power feeds against them and blew them into the furthest regions of the Universe. The damage was done before I had a chance to realise what he had done and then all my efforts were on saving my friends.

In the burning rubble of his spaceship I glimpsed Davros through the shimmering flames that engulfed his once proud ideals. He was defiant to the end, refusing my offer of help and salvation…he would never have been able to accept that his life had been saved by a Time Lord…by The Doctor. He cursed me even as he was engulfed by the fires of Caan's treachery, the last two Daleks dying side by side as I did what I do best, ran and didn't look back.

I chose to ignore the whispered threat that 'One will still die' as I slammed the TARDIS door and with all my friends by my side took the Earth home. How could one die now…we were all safe in the TARDIS...weren't we?

They all moved on...Sarah-Jane, Mickey, Martha, Captain Jack…they had their own lives to live, their own paths to tread and I had no right to expect them to do otherwise. It still hurt but deep down I know that if I ever need them again…they will be there.

What hurt more than anything was losing Rose again. After I had left her in the parallel world I hadn't dared to dream that I would ever see her again. I had never forgotten her but I couldn't live on with a forlorn hope in my hearts and so I lived on with an empty space inside me where her laughter should have been. After the events on the Dalek Crucible and we were left with two part humans, part Time Lords I knew that I would have to let her go again.

He…me…the other Doctor…call him what you like…wasn't supposed to be. He couldn't be in the reality he came from because the events that had created him had ceased to happen….and Rose…Rose was dead in that reality. I had no choice but to take them both back to the parallel world.

He was like me and yet he was so unlike me…he could have the life that I never could. He could have Rose and I never could. So I left them…together…it seemed a good fit. She would help him and he would love her.

I would still love her…always…and my one consolation is that she knows that.

With the dimensional retro-closure sealing off Rose forever….really and truly forever…I was left with Donna. She knew what her fate was, she had to, because she knew what I did and I knew that the DoctorDonna just couldn't survive. Her mind and body were never meant to contain a Time Lord consciousness and it was killing her.

So to save at least a part of what had once been Donna Noble, saviour of the Universe, I had to take away everything that had made her….my mate. I fulfilled Dalek Caan's prophecy when I took away her memories…Donna Nobel the best temp in Chiswick wasn't dead but Donna Noble, time traveller, liberator of the Ood and sometime conscience of a Time Lord was. I had no choice, she deserved to live and this was the only way that I could ensure that happened. She had her family, her friends and especially she had Wilf to look out for her, and she would still be the best temp in Chiswick….maybe even in the whole of London.

So now it was just me and that was fine – despite what Donna had said – I didn't need anybody. I didn't want anybody….they came and they went and they broke my hearts when they did…so I would travel alone.

***********

The space around the Medusa Cascade is different to anywhere else in any Universe…especially now that the Time War has been breached. It ripples in ways that only a Time Lord can feel…and I can….I can feel the pull of the rift at the heart of the Cascade. It is like a siren song calling me, taunting me…tempting me….dragging me back.

I can hear the voices of Davros and Caan, gloating that they had done the impossible…broken my Time Lock, opened up the Time War and unleashed it back on the Universe. This time it was just Davros who escaped but that was enough to almost complete what the Time War had failed to, the total destruction of reality and every form of life that was not Dalek.

Would a different break in the Time Lock, lead to a different outcome? An outcome where maybe nobody died? That is what I wonder as the TARDIS bounces in the distorted vortices that surround the Medusa Cascade. Ever since I had heard the damaged, deluded ramblings of Dalek Caan, the seeds of possibility were sown deep in the back of my mind and now I was alone and the Universe was safe they were calling to me as surely as they had done to Caan.

They told me that maybe there was another way, another Universe to be discovered and another totally different life to be led. They told me I could do it, I was the only one. I was The Doctor, the last survivor of the Time War, it was my right to change my life, to make it better.

The TARDIS protects me as I open the doors and stare at the swirling colours all around me. The sky is full of patches of light and darkness spilling from the rift. It is both beautiful and terrible in equal measure and knowing what it means tears at my mind, twisting my thoughts one way and then another until I think I can understand why Dalek Caan lost his mind. But I am stronger than he was….I have to be. The Time War was ended by my hand and living with that knowledge, with that legacy, is what makes me strong.

A flash of brilliance bursts around me and within it I thought I saw the shining citadel of the Time Lords, bustling and busy with life and yet serene and calm with the majesty of the oldest and mightiest race that had ever lived. It was just as I remembered it…before the Time War…just how it could be again.

Another flash and I can see the whole of Gallifrey now, its twin suns rising above it, blinding me with the glare of a million silver leaves on a thousand trees beneath a cloudless orange sky.

It was my home, as perfect as the day I had left, filled with all those I had left behind, my family and my friends. The Universe would be at peace again if I turned back time and allowed the Time Lords to survive. I could go home, back to those I loved and those who loved me and I wanted to love again, to be a father and a husband and to have a life on Gallifrey.

If I did this I would change everything, all of their lives and all of mine. I wouldn't run from Gallifrey for a life of adventure in amongst the stars I would stay and have the life that I can see in others and only yearn after.

There would be no emptiness in my soul, no silence in my mind. There would be no Rose, no Martha, no Jack and no Donna. They wouldn't meet me and their lives would change too. They'd have a life of work and chips, nights in front of the TV or down the pub. They would be just like so many others and they would know no different. They might look up at the stars and wonder what goes on in the darkness of space but that would be all.

A swirling mass of coloured gas drifts past the TARDIS doors and in it I see the horror of what I am thinking. The horror that would see Daleks and Cybermen, Autons, Slytheen and a host of other races unleashed on not just the Earth but all across the galaxy. Unleashed on races unaware of their existence and unprepared for their brutal conquering ways, and all because I chose to stand aside, to put my own life ahead of those of millions of others.

But don't I deserve a life? Don't I deserve happiness?

But there is the paradox.

I haven't been _unhappy_ with my life as it has been.

I turn from the sights of the Medusa Cascade and all the imagined images it conjures in my mind. I shut the TARDIS doors and lean my head against the comforting solidity of the wood. That at least is real, it is here and now, it is something I can believe in. The TARDIS hums low in the background, she is my last link to Gallifrey and that comforts me.

The temptation to change my history, to bring back the Time Lords is strong, very strong and I am sure I can do it. It won't be easy but nor was killing them all and I survived that, I can survive their resurrection. I am in the right place and there is no time like now.

Raising my head from the door I swallow down my last doubts. I will do it. I owe it to myself, to all those who died at my hand to put things right. The Time Lords watched over the Universe with benevolence and it was a better place for that and it will be again. There is no doubt of that, there is also no certainty that if I do this the horrors will reoccur, maybe this time around there will be no Daleks, no Cybermen, maybe none of them will exist, maybe none of them will trouble the Time Lords or any of the worlds under their protection.

Maybe.

That has to be enough….doesn't it?

Slowly I cross the TARDIS, allowing myself time to look at my magnificent ship and remember all the changes she has undergone and all the adventures we have shared. If I change my history and stay on Gallifrey she won't be my TARDIS, she will belong to somebody else and I will miss her. Or maybe I won't because I don't know if my memories of my life to this point will be lost along with the memories of all those who I have held, and still hold, dear to me. I can still remember what my life was like before the Time War so, if I go back in time, will they stay with me or will they be changed too?

Can I really destroy those memories, those experiences? They have shaped and formed me throughout my life. If I lost them would I still be The Doctor? I'm not sure I would be, I'd be a different person with different morals, different goals, they may be every bit as valid and as grand as the ones I have now, but they wouldn't be the same. And nor would I be.

Not so long ago I had stood on the same spot as I am now, burning up with regeneration energy, desperate not to change.

"I didn't need to change" I told them. "I didn't WANT to, why would I? Look at me!"

And that was the crux of my problem…I liked who I was now. It had been a long and hard journey from the disastrous devastation of the Time War to where I was now, but it had been worth it. I had learnt a lot about myself on that journey and that wouldn't have been possible without all the people who had joined me on my adventures.

We had fought the worst the Universe could throw at us and still found the time to both laugh and cry. They had seen who I was and showed me how I could be better and their memories and their lives deserved much more than being sacrificed on the altar of my own personal vanity.

I wanted the Time Lords back, nobody can truly understand the overwhelming burden I feel being the last of my race, but the cost would be too great. I would lose all my friends, all my memories, I might even give the worst that the Universe has to offer free reign to wreak havoc in their wake

I would lose myself.

I would lose The Doctor.

If I leave the Time War as it is, damaged but still, mostly, sealed away inside the Medusa Cascade then I keep those things I have come to cherish above even the return of my people. For as long as I am The Doctor, as long as I still have my memories of Gallifrey, the Time Lords will never truly be gone for they live on through me.

The monitor on the TARDIS console shows me the swirling maelstrom outside and I know that this is the way it should stay. The Time War IS a fixed point in time and even the last of the Time Lords doesn't have the right to change that. It will always be here, acting as a reminder of the futility of war and the power of love and hope.

I touch the screen and find myself whispering an ancient Gallifreyan prayer, one that I thought I had long forgotten, as if somehow the atoms of my people trapped in this corner of time and space could hear me. They will always be here for me – whenever I need them to be. Their essence is trapped here and now I know that if I come here I can be with them again and that is enough for me.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." I tell them swallowing hard and hurriedly wiping a tear from my face even though there is nobody to see me and nobody to hear me and before I do something that I might regret I spin a dial on the TARDIS. A thin strand of rift energy is pulled towards my ship and with great care I open her heart to the rift and turn the energy back on itself once more sealing the Time War in its own bubble of time and space.

There is nothing more to say or to do except to leave and see what a lonely Time Lord can do in a Universe of infinite complexity. I hope I do something good and worthwhile – for ALL those damaged by the Time War – they deserve nothing less.

And nor do I.


End file.
